


Laundry

by the_dragongirl



Category: October Daye Series - Seanan McGuire
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Collection: Purimgifts Day 3, Community: purimgifts, Families of Choice, Gen, May vs Mortal Technology, POV Female Character, Sisters, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-02 20:12:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10226318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_dragongirl/pseuds/the_dragongirl
Summary: Sometime between An Artifical Night and Late Eclipses, May attempts to do the laundry. It goes about as well as you might expect, considering how often she has probably seen a washing machine.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [opalmatrix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalmatrix/gifts).



 

You learn a lot of things as a Night Haunt. The taste of flesh and bone and spirit. The secrets that people cling to with their last dying breath. The love that they leave behind.

One thing you generally _don’t_ learn, though, is how to operate a washing machine.

I stared down at the laundry card that Toby “helpfully” left by the mechanical menace after last time (and hey, thanks a lot for that. How was I supposed to know it was going to dye the inside of the machine pink, huh? It’s not like death omens spend a lot of time with domestic appliances.) The symbols seemed to blur together. So, more dots meant warmer water...but some of these symbols had actual temperatures on them. And really, not of these numbers were even ON the machine. Actually, I didn’t even know what half these dials did. Oak and Ash, I’d seen systems of magical runes in long dead languages that were less complicated!

I eyed the pile of laundry in the basket balefully. Only moderately bloodstained this time. Toby must have had a good week. Unfortunately, that meant my little blood-removal trick was _not_ going to be enough to get these into a passable state of cleanliness. I sighed. Where were the Bannick when you needed them? One little bath spell, and my troubles would be over.

And, oh, sure, Toby’s a big girl. You might say I could just let her do her own laundry. But...well, she and I were still trying to adjust to this whole roommate situation. It’s not like Fae etiquette actually covers “how to get along when your Fetch becomes a permanent resident.” The closest thing I could dredge up from my memories of the past faces I’d worn was how some of the Changelings had lived with their adult siblings in the mortal world. Toby’s not _exactly_ my sister, but really, what else could you call the woman whose face and memories you share, who takes you into her home and gives you a place to belong?

And those memories showed, among other things, plenty of instances of doing housework for each other (especially when one of them was technically unemployed...something I should probably look into fixing at some point.) Pity that all of those memories came from before the advent of widespread electricity, though.

Well, except for Dare, of course. But then, she and Manual could hardly have been called adult. And no one at Devin’s had been much for doing laundry the mortal way.

Resisting the urge to kick the machine, I straightened my shoulders. Okay. I could do this. It was simple, right? Toby had so, after the last laundry disaster (loudly. In great detail.) Laundry in the machine (and nothing freshly dyed this time! Or magically imbued. Or delicate.) Detergent in the machine. Bleach...nah. Not going there. Leave the dials alone (hopefully, Toby had left them on the right setting the last time she’d run it.) And...button pressed. DONE. Take that, mortal technology! This Fetch is the master the washing machine!

* * *

 

My triumph was, as it turns out, premature. Fifteen minutes later, an ominously loud thumping noise from the laundry room brought me running, with Toby close behind. I ripped open the door, to find...foam. SO much foam. Running up out of the machine, over the side, and down onto the floor. Streaks splattered the walls and ceiling. As we watched in horror, the machine gave one final, resounding _clunk_ , and fell silent.

“May,” Toby said into the quiet, her voice carefully controlled. “Exactly _how_ much soap did you put in?”

“Ummm…” I looked over at the detergent bottle. The new bottle, which now that I thought about it, Toby had said was some special type. I think the words “high efficiency” may have been used. “Only a cup? Or maybe two.”

“A cup. Or two,” Toby said flatly. “Of the stuff I said needed maybe a _spoonful_.”

“Errr...yes?”

Toby stared at me. I stared back. A drop of foam fell from the ceiling, and landed on her cheek.

“May?”

“Yes, Toby?”

“Maybe you should let me handle the laundry from now on. Or make Quentin do it when he’s over. Or, you know, leave it to _literally_ _anyone_ _else_.”

The washing machine gave another mechanical belch.

“Yes, Toby.”


End file.
